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In 1973, a group of 50 evangelical leaders spent the weekend after Thanksgiving at the YMCA hotel on South Wabash Avenue in Chicago. Just when Paul Henry, a political science professor from Calvin College, was urging the group to break evangelicals' silence on the social evils of the day, a shot rang out in the hotel corridors. The hotel was no luxury palace, and this was not your typical evangelical weekend conference.

The conferees gathered to commit to social justice. The conference's concern would not be so unusual today. Now evangelicals left, center, and right agree that social justice is one of the central callings of all Christians. Thirty years ago, only a frustrated minority—like those at the Chicago meeting—thought so. Today evangelicals may disagree about what policies will get us there, but they agree about the need to pursue "the righteousness that exalts a nation." Three decades ago, a lot of evangelicals would have called this political meddling, if not selling out the gospel.

The radical shift in modern evangelicalism began when these assembled delegates met amid the violence of inner city Chicago. They represented a wide array of traditions and viewpoints, and they found that they had to confront each other if they were to assure that the declaration they were crafting would be truly comprehensive and speak prophetically. Their manifesto had to address economic justice, peacemaking, racial reconciliation, and gender concerns within a biblical framework, and in ways that honored an evangelical passion for others' salvation in Jesus Christ.

The prevailing consensus of evangelicals regarding social justice suggests the delegates succeeded, perhaps beyond their wildest dreams. The Chicago Declaration remains fresh and relevant today, and its principal organizational child, Evangelicals for Social Action (ESA), is still implementing it (with help from other like-minded evangelical organizations).

The historic moment was not lost on two journalists who covered the Chicago meeting and saw some "man bites dog" value to the story. Evangelical Protestants at the time tended to be seen as Richard Nixon's Silent Majority, the solid backers of the social status quo. But in Chicago they were speaking out against injustice. Marjorie Hyer of The Washington Post wrote at the time that the November weekend's discussions "could well change the face of both religion and politics in America." And Chicago Sun-Times religion writer Roy Larson wrote, "Someday American church historians may write that the most significant church-related event of 1973 took place last week at the YMCA hotel on S. Wabash."

In fact, a number of very important things did happen.

These delegates were not the first modern evangelicals to advocate social justice. Carl Henry, CHRISTIANITY TODAY's first editor and one of the leaders among postwar evangelical theologians, wrote the pioneering epistle for the recovery of an evangelical social mission, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism, back in 1947. By the time of the Chicago Declaration, a growing number of evangelical intellectuals and ministry leaders were lamenting the divorce of evangelism and social justice. Yet there was plenty of resistance to their remarriage. Liberal Protestants who were trying to reduce evangelism to social advocacy opposed it, and so did conservative Protestants, who tended to think of ministering to human need as mostly a marketing tool for evangelism.

So why was there a breakthrough in the aftermath of the Chicago Declaration? Some of the credit must go to the ESA's abiding insistence that social justice was profoundly biblical, and its leaders' relentless efforts to put the very words of the Law, the Prophets, and our Savior before the evangelical public. Let Justice Roll Down, exclaimed John Perkins, quoting Amos. For God So Loved the Third World, declaimed Thomas Hanks, quoting scores of biblical texts. But non-ESA related organizations also advocated a renewed interest in social concerns: the conservative Moody Monthly carried some articles bearing the message of social justice.

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December 2003, Vol. 47, No. 12